U.S. Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte in Washington, D.C., U.S., January 9, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
President Donald Trump's new intelligence community chief came into his appointed post ready to fire people, CNN reported Friday morning.
Director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Bill Pulte has now also taken over as director of national intelligence and began "asking for a list of every employee in the office so he could assess whether to fire them," CNN reported on Friday morning, citing two sources familiar with the matter. He wants to eliminate hundreds of jobs and he wants to do it quickly.
Outgoing Director Tulsi Gabbard didn't even know Pulte was showing up until she got a brief heads-up.
The report said that he met with lawyers and staff during the day.
Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) told CNN on Friday morning that the last thing someone does is go into work on their first day and start firing people. It's prompting a lot of concern from him that Pulte "could weaken America's national security."
CNN host Sara Sidner asked whether DOGE, Elon Musk's failed project to eliminate $2 trillion from the federal budget, had already done the firings.
"It did," said Juliette Kayyem, CNN's senior national security analyst and ex-assistant secretary of Homeland Security.
"Look, Bill Pulte is there for one reason, and that is to satisfy the president's agenda of politicizing the intelligence community," she continued. "And that is so we'll look at sort of, you know, his notions of — well, the presidents' notions of election fraud in various elections. I want to say, just it's not a personal opinion: by statute, Bill Pulte is not qualified for this position. The Director of National Intelligence is supposed to come from the intelligence community. Bill Pulte is a businessman with strong ties to MAGA and to Trump."
Pulte has never held a job in national security or intelligence.
Kayyem said that the only reason that Pulte is in the post is to "go after the president's political critics and perceived political enemies."
Another shocking revelation came when Pulte asked whether "he could bring the President’s Daily Brief to his house, raising alarm bells among intelligence officials," one source told CNN.
The top briefing book is highly classified. A "second source pushed back on this characterization, noting that the PDB is provided electronically," the report added.
CNN also reported that Pulte wanted to know his level of security clearance. As the top intelligence official, he would have the top intelligence clearance. He also wondered if he had access to his own government plane.
These were the questions Pulte had in a meeting that was supposed to be an explanation of "the core mission of ODNI to Pulte."
Kayyem said that some people tend to look at the ODNI post the way that Trump does, "which is essentially ... is he a friend or not a friend to what Trump wants to do, which is to use the intelligence agencies, all of them, because that's what the DNI oversees to go after political critics and then to go after anyone who might oppose an election threat to the president."
She added that Pulte will politicize the department more than any other previous person in the post.
Sidner called the matter "fascinating to watch all of this happen" because it is coming "from a president who talked so much about the deep state that was against him. And now to me, it seems like he's trying to create the deep state himself."